WEBVTT - S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:02.960 Hey there, it's your host ed helms. 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:03.200 Here. 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:06.400 Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.479 to remind you that my brand new book is coming 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:13.440 out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:17.000 Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:21.880 order it right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me, 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:24.600 if you like this show, you're gonna love this book. 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.680 It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.440 just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.880 I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.600 I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.560 San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:46.760 ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.600 and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:54.000 turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.600 to snafoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.120 and check out all the tour details and day, or 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.280 just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.040 that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:18.160 three formula six. November thirtieth, nineteen twenty eight, Cleveland, Ohio. 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:22.320 The city has just opened a new music hall downtown. 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:27.160 It's nineteen twenties opulence from top to bottom, arched ceilings 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:31.200 in an Italian style, columns and balconies glowing with gold leaf, 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:35.600 a giant plaster eagle looking down over the stage. Maybe 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.320 not how I would do the decor, more into tasteful 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.280 minimalism myself, but the folks in Cleveland are eating it up. 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:46.520 A massive sparkling chandelier spills light over a crowd of 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:51.160 thousands who are all losing their minds hearing for the 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.240 Paul Whiteman Orchestra playing their hits. They're the most popular 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.160 band in America, and they have a talented young coronetist 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:04.400 blowing sweet notes from his that's Bis bider Beck on 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:08.239 the coronet. How many folks named Bix nowadays? I'd say, 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.720 you know you're in the twenties, baby. He's standing in 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:16.200 the back row of the band doing his thing. Bix 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.160 is a small, dapper fella, dressed in a tux with 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.080 slicked brown hair parted down the middle like an open 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:28.040 Faulkner novel. A few songs into the performance, something strange happens. 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.160 Bix's eyes rolled back, He slumps over on the stage 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:39.680 and falls to the ground completely unconscious. A band mate 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.359 jolts him awake, helps him backstage, and eventually he takes 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:50.119 him back to his hotel room. That night, Bix has 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.519 a freak out in his hotel room. He yells hysterically, 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:58.520 he destroys furniture. This surprised everyone who knew him. He 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.519 was a jazz musician, I a member of led Zeppelin. 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:05.559 His bandmates would later describe it as a fit of delirium. 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:07.480 They said he cracked. 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:13.880 Up Yon Jo or Yon. 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:17.160 True. 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:24.040 Just a little song Keep Georgia on my Mind. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:30.480 Georgia on My Mind, That Little Diddy is the American 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.760 songbook classic Georgia on My Mind. Maybe you know the 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.440 iconic Ray Charles version, but this is an original recording 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:42.240 with the composer Hogy Carmichael from the last recording session 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.480 of Bix's career. In his solo, you can still hear 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.880 Bix's genius, and though you might not be able to tell, 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.640 Bis reportedly didn't have enough breath to finish some of 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.280 the gorgeous phrases in his solo Towards the end of 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:08.080 the song, Bix is struggling. He never really recovers. A 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.400 year later, Bis is home in his queen's New York apartment. 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.720 By now, he's bedridden, down to just one hundred and 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:20.480 fifty pounds, complaining of constant headaches, dizziness, memory loss, and blackouts. 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:24.520 This summer night, a neighbor visits and finds Bix in 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:31.479 bed under the sheets, hallucinating. Bix dies that night. He 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:36.880 was just twenty eight. What happened to him? That question 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.920 haunted Bix's family and his fans. Sure they knew Bix 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:43.320 wasn't well, and they knew that, like a lot of 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.880 touring musicians, Bicks was a heavy drinker. That had been 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:51.039 true since his teens, But it would take years for 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:55.560 anyone to see how this all fit into a larger story. 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.719 In the nineteen twenties, taking a drink put Bix, along 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:02.400 with me millions of Americans, right in the middle of 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.360 the decade's bitter divide over alcohol. In the end, the 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.080 war between the wets and the dryes would have a 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:14.920 massive human cost. I'm ed Helms and This is Snaffo, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:19.359 a show about history's greatest screw ups. Last season, we 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:22.240 told the story of the burglary that exposed Jay Edgar 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:26.240 Hoover's secret FBI. This season, we go back a little 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.440 further in time, all the way to the nineteen twenties. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:32.599 We're bringing you a dark tale from the heart of 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:37.360 the Prohibition era. As we all know, Prohibition did not work. 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:41.520 It was what you might call a snaffoo. Within that 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:46.599 snaffo is another snaffhoo, one you probably haven't heard about. 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:51.720 How a lot of Americans started dying mysteriously and the 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.360 unlikely duo who tried to figure out why and save them. 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:00.840 On this season of Snaffo, the story of Formulas. How 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:04.680 prohibitions wore on alcohol went so off the rails the 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:24.320 government wound up poisoning its own people. I thought I 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.320 had a pretty good handle on prohibition. The nineteen twenties, 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.360 the era before the Great Depression, when we felt like, hey, 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:33.919 world War One is over, what better to do than party? 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:41.440 The Harlem Renaissance, jazz votes for women. America was feeling 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.600 a burst of new energy. We were trying out cars, 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.560 trying out radio. Heck, we were trying out movies. And 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.160 as a Georgia boy, I can't help loving how much 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.960 love Georgia was getting in that decade. In addition to 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:59.760 Georgia on my mind, another classic emerged, Sweet Georgia Brown. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:07.599 And the background to all of that was, of course, Prohibition. 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.200 It's just kind of part of our mental furniture. Right. 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.360 For me, the word Prohibition takes me back to all 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.720 the great portrayals in classic American cinema, like The Untouchables, 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.720 two straight hours of mafia set pieces. Who could forget 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.960 when elliot Ness faces down Al Capone in a hotel lobby? 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:27.920 Come on, you can't discern up a pitch? Do you 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:29.480 talk to me like that in front of my son? 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.320 If you didn't sneak out to hear de Niro drop 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.920 f bombs in an Italian accent, were you even thirteen? 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.400 The summer the Untouchables came out. I mean, just listen 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:43.400 to that, macho chest thumping cops and mobsters, good guys 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.640 and bad guys going toe to toe. It's classic Hollywood 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.000 stuff that just reels you in. But then, well, I 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.960 heard the story of a Prohibition snafo that genuinely surprised 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:56.880 me because it wasn't part of the Prohibition story that 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.360 I knew. It was the story of Formula six and 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:05.200 a devastating Prohibition era program by the federal government. Hey, honey, 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:06.720 have you ever heard of Formula six? 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:07.600 Now? 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.440 Yeah, almost no one had. So I called up someone 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:16.240 who really brought Prohibition into focus for me, along with 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.840 millions of TV fans like me. Hey, so good to 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.040 meet you, man, it's so so great to meet you. 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:27.720 That's Terence Winter, creator of the epic TV series Boardwalk Empire. 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.200 I put the question to him, I'm curious if you're 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.360 if you hit on in your research, are you familiar 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:40.079 with Formula six? I am not, And that was wild 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.320 to me because his show is stacked with the kinds 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:47.520 of details that made nineteen twenties Atlantic City come to life. 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.000 Even though it's one hundred years ago, it's still felt modern. 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.920 People dressed in suits, they went out to restaurants, they 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.240 talked on telephone, they drove in cars. 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.960 You know, it's still felt cool. It still felt like excessive. 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.600 Well this was modern. You know you could wear some 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:03.520 of those clothes today. 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:05.520 I mean, I gotta say, I do look pretty good 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.040 in a pair of spats. But the sense we have 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.560 that we already know prohibition, it can actually lead us astray. 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.920 A little, because cliches about life in the nineteen twenties 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.599 are so thick, we assume we know what it's all about. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:24.320 You know, liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake. 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.600 There was a bunch of mobsters and Tommy guns, and 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:30.480 then it got repealed. Yeah. 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:32.400 I mean, every time you ever see anything in the twenties, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:34.960 everybody's doing the fucking Charleston. I was like, did they 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:38.960 do any other songs written between nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty? 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.520 Obviously, yes, I mean we're talking about the birth of jazz. 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.880 We're talking about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Eddie Lang Earl Hines. 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.800 I could go on. The point is we tend to 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.640 paint history with broad brushes, like Terry says, when we 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:57.880 think about the Prohibition era, our minds probably go immediately 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.560 to the cliches we know best, and the real complex 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.080 human lives that ordinary people lived in the past don't 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:08.920 always come through when we talk about history. But this story, 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.200 the story of Formula six, reveals something bizarre that was 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:17.040 happening all along. Underneath all the organized crime and speak 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:22.600 easy gin and temperance moralizing, a shocking government plot rooted 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:27.120 in the first modern American culture war. It starts with 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:31.960 a pair of scientists, investigators who happened to see it coming. 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:44.079 In fact, they tried to stop it. It's nineteen eighteen 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.880 in New York and the city is facing a problem. Okay, 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.720 the city is facing a lot of problems, but here's 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:56.040 a tricky one. A record number of murders are going unsolved. 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.959 A city report lays blamed squarely on one government office, 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:04.880 in particular, the office of the coroner. The coroner was 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:10.000 essentially the city's chief death investigator. He issued death certificates 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:14.400 and performed autopsies for all murders, suicides, and accidental debts. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.240 A pretty grim but important job, and yet the city's 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:24.360 coroners were either horribly unqualified or terribly corrupt, or quite 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:25.400 often both. 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.360 They made coroners out of anyone who needed a job, 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:32.520 who the party machine owed them a favor. 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.200 That's Deborah Blum, author of the Poisoner's Handbook, Murder and 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.440 the Birth of Forensic Medicine. In jazz Age, New York. 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.960 She describes how at the time, the police essentially used 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:49.200 coroners to rubber stamp false reports and sometimes even cover 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:52.920 up murders. And when she says anyone could become a coroner, 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:54.200 she means it. 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.520 There were sign painters that were milkmen. There were funeral 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:04.559 home operators, there were lawyers, and there were notably doctors 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:09.360 who were such terrible doctors that they had lost their practices. 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:12.320 And if you think that's bad, let me introduce you 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.320 to the head corner of New York in nineteen eighteen, 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.920 a guy who showed up to crime scenes completely hammered. 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:25.640 There are death certificates that literally say could be diabetes 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:29.120 or possibly an auto accident. Right, I mean, you're just 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:30.080 going seriously. 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.200 After stories like that started coming to light, the mayor 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:36.720 had no choice but to make some changes. It was 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.160 time to find someone who could get to the bottom 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:43.120 of all these crimes, someone who is less Homer Simpson 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:47.360 and more Sherlock Holmes or I don't know, maybe anyone 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:51.720 who could stand upright. City officials decided the coroner's office 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.760 was a joke, an embarrassment, and a waste of taxpayers money, 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:02.320 so they shut it down. But they couldn't just ignore 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.080 the reasons people died in New York. They had to 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.920 replace it with something. Their idea, a new system for 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.480 the city and a new position that would be filled 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.840 by a qualified doctor who would appoint a trained staff 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:18.760 to examine cases and rule on causes of death. This 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:22.959 new lead position was chief Medical Examiner of New York City. 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.559 So they announced the job opening and in walk de 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:34.600 fella named Charles Norris. H no love Walker Texas ranger 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.680 Chuck Norris, and god knows, I'm scared of him. But 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.800 just to be clear, this is doctor Charles Norris of 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:42.000 New York, New York. 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:46.040 He was a really big guy and he had one 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.439 of those kind of classic spade like beards. He had 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:54.480 a big booming voice and a a Yale football player's presence, 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:55.960 and he used it when he needed to. 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.320 That's right. This particular Norris was a yalely with the 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:02.319 appropriate aristocratic roots. 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:07.079 He was a descendant of the Norrises who founded Norristown, Pennsylvania. 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:12.040 So they were a long time, well established, important American family. 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.960 Which means that yep, Norris was rich rich. He didn't 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.520 hide it. Norris was a public servant who rode around 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:20.800 like Bruce Wayne. 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:26.120 He never went anywhere without his being driven by his chauffeur. 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.640 And even when he went to crime scenes, you know, 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.000 his chauffeur would take him to the crime scene and 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:35.760 he would get out in his Kashmir coat and his 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:36.920 expensive hat. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.000 Not exactly a man of the people, you'd think, but 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.440 money bags aside. It turns out public service actually ran 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:48.960 deep in Norris's blood. Norris's ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.600 Ever heard of it. They stripped lead gutters and rain 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.520 spouts from their house to make bullets for the Continental Army. Yeah, 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:02.520 the house is flooding again. Smoking chair will be ruined. 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:03.000 My beloved. 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.640 It is the sacrifice we make to bring forth a 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:07.480 new nation. 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.920 And then in the Civil War, Norris's grandfather negotiated the 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.960 first one hundred million dollar loan financing the Union government's 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:19.640 war against the Confederates. 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.240 All of the all of the. 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:26.880 Norris took the do gooder spirit of his ancestors and 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:30.360 studied medicine, became a doctor, And now as the Great 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.120 War raged in Europe, he was looking to do his 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.640 part to keep the people of New York safe. So 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.000 he made a real run at the position of Chief 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.120 Medical Examiner when the job opened up, an actually qualified 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:48.360 doctor who wanted to use his position for the public good. Well, 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.040 it turns out that even for someone who wanted to 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:53.920 do good, even after he started his job as chief 0:15:53.920 --> 0:16:00.400 medical Examiner, the odds were stacked against him because it 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.360 turns out there were plenty of officials who simply liked 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:08.000 the old way of doing things. Norris's budget for his 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:12.640 staff and his workspace was laughably small that drunk corner 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.680 had left him in office literally in shambles. 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.120 At one point, he was actually forced to buy the 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:24.640 clocks on the walls of the Medical Examiner's office because 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:27.720 the mayor the budget is such an agree that they 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:29.200 couldn't even afford clock. 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:35.880 Before, police officers used corners to play their political games, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.520 but now with Norris in charge, they were in for 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.640 a surprise. Like when a few officers brought Norris a 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.400 body to examine, which happened to be riddled with bullet holes. 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.680 They asked for a simple John Hancock on a let's say, 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.280 pre filled out death certificate that said the cause of 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:57.360 death was suicide. Norris looked at the corpse and said 0:16:58.240 --> 0:16:59.120 that I don't think. 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.360 So out of the question, in my opinion, to even 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.199 consider the possibility of a suicide on account of the 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:07.080 number and situation of. 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:08.000 The bullet wounds. 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.119 There were four bullet wounds spray across the corpse. 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.120 In other words, seems impossible that this poor guy shot 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:20.760 himself in the heart, shoulder, leg, and arm. Norris was 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.879 serious about his work. He was serious about building the 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:27.280 Office of the Chief Medical Examiner into an effective research 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:29.760 team that could get to the bottom of all the 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:33.119 deaths in New York City. But to do that he 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:37.199 needed help. Norris was a doctor, not a chemist, who 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.760 could detect toxins or poisons in a dead body. And 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.960 during this time, there were more and more poisons surrounding Americans. 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:50.400 Morphine and teething, medicines for infants, opium and sedatives, arsenic 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:54.399 and everything from cosmetics to pesticides. And don't even ask 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.480 about how much formaldehyde they were mixing with cowbrains and 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.560 putting in milk. And I thought that micro plastics and 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.040 my water bottle were bad. And it's not like it 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.080 was harmless. People were dying from this stuff so often, 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:11.320 in fact, that it was hard to keep up. But 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:14.320 here's the thing about poisons. They're just not quite as 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.160 obvious as bullet holes. And so Norris had a crazy 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:22.200 idea to create a dedicated lab where chemists could work 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:26.639 on determining causes of death. Call it a toxicology lab. 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:30.160 At the time, no other city in America had one, 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.840 and you know Norris and his cashmere, he always had 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:38.600 to have the best. This lab would be installed at Bellevue, 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.280 a New York hospital perched along the East River since 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:43.200 eighteen eleven. 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:47.080 As he thinks about organizing his department, the first thing 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:49.720 he thinks is, we need a chemist. 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.000 Norris just needed to pick the right brainiac for the job. 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.960 Fortunately for him, there was someone who fit the bill 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.720 right down the hall, an assistant professor at the Bellevue 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:05.040 Medical College, and the award for Forensic Toxicologist for the 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.280 newly established New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:13.440 the clocks don't even work, goes to doctor Alexander Gettler. 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:20.360 Come on down, alex you're the lucky winner, uh, Doctor Getler, 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:27.959 Doctor Geedler. Well, when Norris approached him, this Alexander Gettler 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.600 fellow wasn't convinced that playing robin to Norris's batman was 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:36.399 his dream job. You see, Alexander Getler was already in 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.040 a position that was nothing to sneeze at in those days, 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.560 and well, if you looked at where the invitation was 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.560 coming from, Let's just say it was pretty clear. The 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.760 Medical Examiner's office was in the build the plane as 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:52.560 you fly stage of its existence. Not to mention, Getler 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:56.000 was from a completely different world. He was quite different 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:57.560 from Flash the cash Norris. 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.119 He was trim, yeah, dark hair, he had a long 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.320 angular face, chomping on a cigar all the time. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:10.320 From what I understand, that's Dorothy Atsel, Alexander Gettler's granddaughter. 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:12.960 Every picture we have of him, he's in a suit. 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.240 And that's Vicky Atsel, Alexander's great granddaughter. 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:19.880 He's got like a pretty serious expression, which I think 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.320 was kind of his m He was a pretty serious guy. 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:24.520 He just kind of like went to work as anyone 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.560 would go to work with his suit jacket on. 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:32.200 He wasn't from wealth or Ivy League education or anything 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:34.719 like that. He just kind of pulled himself up and 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.400 followed what he wanted to do, got the education he needed, 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:41.080 worked nights so he could go to school during the day. 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:44.000 Tickets, please all right, have a nice day. 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:46.640 Gettler worked as a ticket taker for the thirty ninth 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:50.280 Street Brooklyn to Battery Ferry and took the overnight shift. 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.639 During the day, he earned himself a PhD in biochemistry 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:58.000 at Columbia. Those brains and you know, fairly intense work 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.240 ethic got Gettler his teaching job. He had put in 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.680 the hard yards and he had earned it. But outside 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.000 of work, he lived like a lot of other people 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.320 in his Brooklyn neighborhood, tucked snugly in a brownstone with 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:13.840 his wife's son and more than a half dozen Irish 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:14.359 in laws. 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.320 He raised his kids in the middle of this kind 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:22.520 of chaos of the Irish American life in Brooklyn. I 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.240 think that hugely influenced also his sense of the world 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:28.720 because he was so connected to her family. 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.000 But going back and forth between a busy home and 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.400 a busy hospital, he saw the difference medicine could make 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:38.840 in the lives of everyday people. So even though he 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:41.720 had turned down Norris's offer, he couldn't put it out 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:45.280 of his mind. Maybe if he joined the Medical Examiner's 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:49.440 office he could do some good. So when Norris came 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:53.800 around again, Getler was ready to consider the job. But 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:57.200 Norris was also completely honest with Getler. This was nothing 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.159 like a cushy job in academia. Gettler would have have 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.800 to design the lab from scratch. You would have to 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.199 figure out for himself how to do the work of 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:09.600 detecting poisons. There were no training programs in forensic toxicology. 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:13.200 He would have to blaze his own trail. That was 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:16.720 all right, though, because Gentler loved nothing more than a 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.800 challenge and cramming more chemistry work into his days. He 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:23.360 agreed to take the position, but only if he could 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.640 keep teaching at the medical College. That's how much he 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:31.360 believed in his grind. Norris looked around at the backlog 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:34.920 of bodies stacking up in Bellevue and said, sure, man, 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:35.760 whatever you want. 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:41.119 My grandfather was tapped to be the chief toxicologist. It 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:46.200 just felt almost like they were like superhero crusaders as well, 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.600 you know, like starting something and actually not just starting it, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:55.520 but turning the page on a system that didn't work, 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:58.280 wasn't fair and was corrupt. 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:01.320 It's funny what you said, I was gonna say, you said, 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:03.399 mom about them being like superheroes that have just like 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:05.560 it feels like it was. They're like like a Buddy 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:10.119 cop movie of like these two scientists in the trenches together. 0:23:10.200 --> 0:23:13.159 And while the scientific trenches of New York may have 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:17.280 been metaphorical, there's no question that our dynamic duo had 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:20.680 a very real fight on their hands, because it turned 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.080 out that even though the city was moving on from 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:26.480 the flu epidemic and the war in France was winding down, 0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:30.919 a different kind of war was just getting started, and 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:34.720 Norris and Gettler had gotten together just in time for 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:37.160 the shit to hit the fan. 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:52.159 It's been in the big baggie, in the box, in 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:54.920 a closet, and if you look at each of the pages, 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:58.600 they were all like sort of frayed and chipping. 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.119 Dorothy Atsel is at at her kitchen table. 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:06.080 I'm hesitating separating the pages, yeah, because every time I 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:08.639 open it there's pieces of paper that just kind of 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:09.480 flake off. 0:24:09.760 --> 0:24:12.760 She's meeting with one of our writers, Albert Chen. She's 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:16.600 very very carefully handling a dusty blue, hard bound book 0:24:16.840 --> 0:24:20.320 that's older than my mom's wedding China. The book is 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:24.160 a collection of typed reports written by Alexander Getler over 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:25.560 the course of three decades. 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.679 His dissertation was the balance of acid forming and base 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:34.959 forming elements in food and its relation to ammonia metabolism. 0:24:35.440 --> 0:24:36.560 I don't know what that means. 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:39.639 Yeah, it's been a while since tenth grade chemistry for 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:40.280 me too. 0:24:40.560 --> 0:24:44.040 And then like this one, which was from nineteen twenty one, 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:48.560 a method for the determination of death by drowning. So 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:49.800 now I understand. 0:24:49.440 --> 0:24:50.200 What this is about. 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:54.360 It's easy to understand. Back in the day when he 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:58.640 was doing all of his work, they were pulling bodies 0:24:58.640 --> 0:25:01.840 out of the and you, how do you know if 0:25:01.880 --> 0:25:04.560 they drowned or they died by another means? 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:08.959 Yeah, a great question that before Getler and Norris came along, 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:13.320 no one had any clue how to answer. But Dorothy's daughter, 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:15.760